The present disclosure relates generally to mesh networks. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to mesh path discovery in wireless mesh networks.
This background description is provided for the purpose of presenting the context of this disclosure. Nothing in this background section that does not otherwise qualify as prior art against this disclosure is either expressly or impliedly admitted as prior art against this disclosure.
Wireless mesh networks are growing in popularity, in part due to their ability to improve the range of wireless communications while reducing the power consumption of the wireless devices employed. Wireless mesh networks include a plurality of mesh points that communicate wirelessly with one another to route data. Data is propagated from a source mesh point to a destination mesh point either directly (over a “one-hop” mesh path) or by a mesh path comprising one or more intermediate mesh points (a “multi-hop” mesh path). Therefore, each mesh point within a wireless mesh network operates as both receiver and transmitter to route data between the source and destination mesh points within a given mesh path.
In general, mesh networks are often deployed in an ad-hoc manner, and in a resource-constrained environment. In some deployments, for example in a classroom where each student has a laptop configured as a mesh point, most of the mesh points are in direct communication range of each other. In these “dense mesh” deployments, most of the mesh points are one-hop neighbors.
To discover paths to other mesh points, for example when no path exists or when a current path expires, each mesh point broadcasts management frames such as path request frames. However, in a dense mesh, the probability of frame collision is very high. It has been shown that frame collision can interfere with path discovery mechanisms, resulting in multi-hop paths between mesh points that are one-hop neighbors. In addition, these collisions can cause path discovery to consume significant resources, such as the battery power of the mesh points, the bandwidth of the wireless medium, and the like.